News & Press

PRESS RELEASE

April 12, 2018

PI World Will Spotlight Diversity & Inclusion

OSIsoft and SAP announce a half-day forum at PI World focused on improving diversity and inclusion in industry and technology

OSIsoft, a global leader in operational intelligence, has announced that its largest conference, PI World, will include a half-day Diversity & Inclusion Forum on April 23, 2018 at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco. SAP, a PI World gold sponsor, will co-sponsor the Diversity & Inclusion Forum.

OSIsoft, a global leader in operational intelligence, has announced that its largest conference, PI World, will include a half-day Diversity & Inclusion Forum on April 23, 2018 at the Parc 55 Hotel in San Francisco. SAP, a PI World gold sponsor, will co-sponsor the Diversity & Inclusion Forum.

From the resignation of Travis Kalanick as Uber's CEO to the now infamous Google memo, diversity in technology has received a lot of attention in recent years. A 2015 survey of 200 senior women in Silicon Valley, aptly titled, “The Elephant in the Valley,” found that two-thirds were not included in important events due to their gender. The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has found that tech employs only half as many African-American and Hispanic employees as compared to other economic sectors.

Other data shows that the lack of diversity within technology comes at a high price. A 2017 study from the Kapor Center for Social Impact and Harris Poll estimated that the turnover in employees due to lack of diverse and inclusive workspaces cost the tech industry $16 billion per year.

“Today many business entities are in the midst of a digital revolution. Talent diversity is a critical enabler for re-inventing agile and super-flexible organizations,” said Dr. Homa Bahrami, a senior lecturer and faculty director at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Dr. Bahrami will deliver a keynote address at the PI World Diversity & Inclusion Forum focused on the role of diversity and inclusion in organizational agility.

The Diversity & Inclusion Forum will open with a Women in Technology networking lunch, followed by Dr. Bahrami's keynote and a panel discussion with Norton Green, OSIsoft's Director of Executive Engagements; Sheena Badani, Head of Commercial Operations at Element Analytics; Jennifer Fleury, Global Head of SAP's Business Women Network; and Lydia Sierra, Analyst with Barrick Gold Nevada.

The event concludes with two breakout tracks focused on giving participants strategies for improving diversity and inclusion in their work places. The first track, led by Dawn Sprague, OSIsoft's VP of Human Resources, will focus on “Managing for Diversity & Inclusion.”

“The workplace of tomorrow will be a virtual and global workplace. In our session, we will provide resources and networks to help managers lead teams that are spread across cultures, geographies, and experiences,” said Sprague.

Paradigm, a company that specializes in designing diversity and inclusion strategies for innovative organizations, will facilitate the second breakout on techniques for Raising Awareness in the Workplace.

“Unconscious bias is a significant barrier not only to diversity and inclusion, but to effective decision-making and team collaboration. We will give participants specific and effective strategies for recognizing and managing bias to create more productive teams and more inclusive cultures,” said Joelle Emerson, Founder and CEO of Paradigm.

“Making technology more diverse and inclusive is one of the most important conversations happening today. We are proud to co-sponsor PI World's Diversity & Inclusion Forum,” said Frank Ruland, Global VP and Head of Industry Ecosystem for Energy and Natural Resources at SAP.

OSIsoft's commitment to diversity and inclusion starts with its President Jenny Linton, who has made it a focus of her leadership to advocate for women entering science and technology careers. “We have seen time and again that successful digital transformations start with people. We want to help our customers, our partners, and ourselves get better at bringing more voices into these conversations. It is not just about business, it's the right thing to do, and part of who we want to be as a company,” said Linton.

About PI World
PI World brings together more than 2500 attendees from power utilities, oil and gas, mining, and other traditional industries for 70+ talks in nine industry-specific tracks. Additionally, the PI World Expo features more than 70 booths showcasing applications and solutions from technology leaders, such as PTC and National Instruments, to advanced analytics start-ups, such as Element Analytics and Seeq. For more information on PI World, visit piworld.osisoft.com/US2018.

About OSIsoft, LLC
OSIsoft is dedicated to helping people transform their world through data. OSIsoft makes the PI System, one of the world's most widely-used technologies for IIoT. The PI System captures data from sensors, manufacturing equipment and other devices and transforms it into rich, real-time insights that engineers, executives and partners can use to reduce costs, dramatically improve overall productivity or create new services.
Some of the world's largest organizations, including more than 1,000 leading utilities, 95 percent of the largest oil and gas companies and more than 65 percent of the Fortune 500 industrial companies, rely on the PI System to manage their businesses. For more, please visit http://www.osisoft.com.

About SAP
SAP is the world leader in enterprise applications in terms of software and software-related service revenue. Based on market capitalization, they are the world's third largest independent software manufacturer.

About OSIsoft, LLC. OSIsoft, a global leader in operational intelligence, delivers an open enterprise infrastructure to connect sensor-based data, operations and people to enable real-time and actionable insights. As the maker of the PI System, OSIsoft empowers companies across a range of industries in activities such as exploration, extraction, production, generation, process and discrete manufacturing, distribution and services to leverage streaming data to optimize and enrich their businesses. For over thirty years, OSIsoft customers have embraced the PI System to deliver process, quality, energy, regulatory compliance, safety, security and asset health improvements across their operations. Founded in 1980, OSIsoft is a privately-held company, headquartered in San Leandro, California, U.S.A, with offices around the world.